Trailer music

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Trailer music is the background music used for film previews, which is not always from the film's soundtrack. Often, people will notice the movie previews they see in theaters will feature music that is dramatic, soothing, or whatever kind of sound complements the movie clip scene. Since the score for a movie is usually composed after the film is finished (which is much after trailers are released), a trailer will sometimes use music from other successful films as a subconscious tie-in method.

The music used in the trailer may be:

Music from the score of other movies. Many films in this century have tracked their trailers with music from other campaigns, such as Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (the "Requiem for a Dream" remix) theme, or Pompeii by E.S. Posthumus used in the Spider-Man trailer.
Popular or well-known music, often chosen for its tone, appropriateness of a lyric, or recognizability
Classical music, such as Mozart's Requiem (Cliffhanger), Beethoven's 9th symphony (Die Hard), or Carmina Burana.
"Library" music previously composed specifically to be used in advertising by an independent composer
Specially composed music. One of the most famous Hollywood trailer music composers is John Beal, who began scoring trailers in the 1970's and, in the course of a thirty year career, created original music for over 2,000 movie trailer projects, including 40 of the top-grossing films of all time, such as Star Wars, Forrest Gump, Titanic, Aladdin, Last Samurai and The Matrix.
Songs, which may include knock-offs of recognizable (but expensive to license) songs

The biggest trailer music companies are Immediate Music, X-Ray Dog, Two Steps From Hell, Brand X Music, Pfeifer Broz Music, Future World Music, Groove Addicts and Q-Factory.

[edit] Articles

The Art of Scoring Trailers: John Beal by Lukas Kendall, Part 1 - Film Score Monthly Magazine, issue #35, July 2003, pp 6-7, Part 2 continues in issue #36/37 Aug/Sep 1993, pp18-19 [Online version]

Art of the Tease by Rick Sherwood, Hollywood Reporter August 25, 1992 pp. S-39-S-72